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Thursday, 13 October 2016

TV viewing statistics in Europe and implications for strategic marketing

Italy leads in TV viewing while the British lead in online video viewing. This is according to statistics collected in 2015 by HIS Markit. The study sought to compare TV viewing behaviour in Spain, Italy, UK, France and Germany. On average, every Italian was noted to spend 4hrs and 22 minutes per day watching TV. This was an increase by 18minutes over the levels recorded in 2014. The second largest market for linear TV viewing was Spain where the average was 234minutes per person per day. This was a drop to its lowest level since 2010. In the third position was France at 3hrs 44mins. In Germany, viewing time per person per day was rated at 3hrs 30mins while in UK, it was at 3hrs 7mins...

The implication of the finding above is that organisations in Italy have at least 1hr in TV viewership than their counterparts in the UK. This means that advertisement on TV ought to be more valuable and possibly produce higher returns than TV adverts in the UK. The assumption is, nevertheless, dependent on other extraneous factors such as the size of the economy among others. For example, even though the proportion of UK consumers viewing TV at a time is less, the purchasing power of UK consumers is much higher than in Italy. The UK is therefore likely to yield greater results than Italy; even though the latter can be reached more effectively through linear TV. It should also be noted that the trends can be an important guiding factor for future planning. While Italy’s TV viewership was increasing, the trend was different in countries such as Spain with the levels declining to the lowest they have been since 2010. A strategic marketer would want to consider such trends when allocating marketing budgets since it is most prudent to opt for mediums that are attracting the attention of the consumer.

Trends in online video viewership were different from the linear TV ones; and significantly so. For instance, the UK online video viewing had grown by 25.7% in 2015 to 9mins 24secs. In Spain, the online viewing grew by 20.8% to 8mins 49secs per person per day. The online viewing time was highest in France where it had grown by 17.9% to 23mins 54secs.

From the trend discussed, online video viewing has been rising and is projected to continue rising. It presents an opportunity for the marketers to pursue online marketing. This platform tends to be cheaper and also easier to integrate with other systems which directly direct the consumer to customer service officers for personal handling of inquiries. This is in addition to online platforms being easy to customise.


But it should also be noted that inasmuch as online video viewership is growing, the disparity between it and linear TV viewing is very high. For instance, online viewing for Spain is 8mins as compared to 234 minutes of linear TV. Similarly, online viewing for UK is 9mins while linear TV viewing is estimated at 187minutes per person per day. This means that linear TV continues to be significant and is unlikely to completely be replaced by online viewing any time soon. This creates a case for strategic marketers holding on to some of these traditional forms of marketing in spite of strides being made in the digital world. 

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